## Facts

- The Missouri Governor issued Executive Order 01-09 creating a state-employee labor-relations framework, including a meet-and-confer process, mediation, and a route to memoranda of agreement that could include binding arbitration concerning wages, hours, and working conditions.
- The Order stated that any award or agreement requiring legislative appropriation or other legislative action, or conflicting with law, would have no force unless and until legislative approval or appropriation occurred.
- Missouri legislators, organizations, and state employees filed a declaratory-judgment action alleging the Order exceeded gubernatorial authority, intruded on legislative control over public-employee compensation and working conditions, and caused unlawful public expenditures.
- Plaintiffs also asserted federal civil-rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
- The circuit court dismissed the state-law counts for failure to state a claim and dismissed the § 1983 counts as not ripe; the dismissal was amended to be without prejudice.
- Plaintiffs appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the executive order was legally “actionable” so as to present a justiciable controversy for declaratory relief.
2. Whether the Governor had constitutional or statutory authority to issue an executive order establishing enforceable procedures for state-employee bargaining, including binding arbitration.
3. Whether plaintiffs’ claims (including taxpayer theories and § 1983 counts) were justiciable and ripe.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed dismissal of the petition.
- It classified Executive Order 01-09 as a directive to subordinate executive officials lacking an identified constitutional or statutory grant of authority, and therefore not legally enforceable.
- Because the Order was not legally actionable, it could not support declaratory-judgment relief.
- The court agreed the § 1983 claims were not ripe in the absence of a concrete, legally enforceable deprivation.

## Legal Principles

- Executive orders may be categorized as: (1) political or ceremonial statements with no legal effect; (2) internal directives to executive-branch subordinates lacking a specific constitutional or statutory basis and creating no enforceable rights; and (3) orders grounded in a direct constitutional or statutory grant that may have the force of law.
- A “category two” executive order—an internal management directive without independent constitutional or statutory authority—does not create judicially enforceable rights or obligations and is not a proper subject of declaratory relief.
- In Missouri, fundamental terms of public employment (including qualifications, tenure, compensation, and working conditions) are matters of lawmaking that cannot be fixed by executive bargaining or contract in a way that displaces legislative control.
- Taxpayer standing to contest allegedly unlawful expenditures does not create a justiciable controversy where the challenged executive action is nonactionable.
- Federal civil-rights claims require a ripe, concrete dispute; a non-enforceable internal directive, without an applied deprivation, does not present a ripe § 1983 controversy.

## Conclusion

The court held that Executive Order 01-09 functioned only as an internal executive-branch directive, expressly contingent on existing law and legislative appropriations, and therefore created no enforceable legal rights. Because the order was nonactionable and nonjusticiable, declaratory relief was unavailable and the related § 1983 claims were unripe, so dismissal was affirmed.


Kinder v. Holden, 92 S.W.3d 793 (Mo. Ct. App. W.D. 2002)